Robots may be used for entertainment, utilitarian, and/or other purposes. A plurality of robots may be deployed in an environment and programmed to carry out one or more tasks. A plurality of robots in such a scenario may be referred to as a “robot swarm.” It is often desired for the robots within the swarm to be “aware” of each other. Individual ones of the robots and/or a central processing unit may carry out localization processes including determining relative location, speed, direction of movement, and/or other information about individual ones of the robots. A tracking system may be used for localization. Tracking systems include, for example, onboard tracking systems, external tracking systems, optical tracking (e.g., camera tracking/imaging), wireless communication systems established between two or more robots and/or between a robot and a central processor, global positioning systems (GPS), and/or other system.
By way of non-limiting example, tracking may be accomplished by optical tracking systems including one or more cameras and/or processors configured to determine information about the location, speed, direction of movement, and/or other localization parameters about objects from captured images/video. Optical tracking systems may provide millimeter-accuracy localization of robots or other objects within an environment. However, optical tracking systems have high cost, require a fixed infrastructure, may be constrained to line-of-sight image capturing, and/or may have other drawbacks.
Wireless communication solutions may include ultra-wide band (UWB), radio frequency identification (RFID), and/or other wireless communication between robots and/or a central processing unit. These and other wireless communication solutions may encounter interference in wirelessly active environments and multi-path issues in multi-robot setups.
Differential global positioning systems (DGPS) are another tracking technique. However, this technique may be restricted to outdoor use only and/or may be blocked by buildings and/or other structures.
On-board localization may be used for localization relative to landmarks and neighboring robots and/or for relative localization to enable collision avoidance. This technique imposes a cost per unit, an issue for swarms of tens to hundreds of robots.